Specimen of wallpaper with a brick repeat pattern of single angular flowers on stalks with two leaves in pinks, red and greens on a grey background; Colour woodblock print, on paper; Design by Owen Jones; from a pattern book (8336.1-132); ca. 1852-74.

Specimen of wallpaper with a brick repeat pattern of single angular flowers on stalks with two leaves in pinks, red and greens on a grey background; Colour woodblock print, on paper.

Given by Miss Catherine Jones, daughter of the artist

Given by Miss Catherine Jones, daughter of the artist.

Jones's wallpaper designs were described by a contemporary critic as having an 'intellectual or abstract character'. Indeed all his wallpapers follow a formula based on the series of thirty seven 'propositions' or rules for design that he set out in the 'Grammar of Ornament'. He stressed that all ornament should be based on geometrical construction and that 'Flowers ... should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind.' In spite of their clever colouring, the results sometimes seem to be uncompromising, but they nevertheless found favour with decorators such as Constance Cary Harrison, author of 'Woman's Handiwork in Modern Homes'(1881) who commended them as 'simple and unpretending, yet most attractive.' Since the 1970s Jones's wallpapers have been reborn, with minor modifications, as some of Laura Ashley's most popular patterns for textiles and papers.
[Gill Saunders, 'British Design at Home', p.52]

8336:106